European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults (RELA)

Vol. 1, n° 1 et 2, octobre 2010

Envisioning future research on the education and learning of adults

* Editorial: Envisioning future research on the education and learning of adults, Andreas Fejes and Henning Salling Olesen * Is there still a place for social emancipation in public policies? Envisioning the future of adult education in Portugal, António Fragoso and Paula Guimarães * The role of adult educators towards (potential) participants and their contribution to increasing participation in adult education - insights into existing research, Aiga von Hippel and Rudolf Tippelt * On the incommensurability of adult education researchers’ worlds, Mieczysław Malewski * Riding the lines of flight, Robin Usher * Workplace ‘learning’ and adult education. Messy objects, blurry maps and making difference, Tara Fenwick * Invisible colleges in the adult education research world, Staffan Larsson * Aggression, recognition and qualification. On the social psychology of adult education in everyday life, Kirsten Weber * A democracy we can eat: a livelihoods approach to TVET policy andprovision, Astrid von Kotze

* Homophobia and heterosexism in a college of education: a culture of fear, a culture of silence, Corrine Wickens, Jennifer Sandlin * Family obligations in Micronesian cultures: implications for educators, Katherine Ratliffe * Commentary on 'Family obligations in Micronesian cultures: implications for educators', Russell Bishop * Latin@ advocacy in the hyphen: faculty identity and commitment in a Hispanic-serving institution, Elizabeth Murakami-Ramalho, Anne-Marie Nunez, Kimberley Cuero * Explorations in using arts-based self-study methods, Anastasia Samaras * 'We are so over pharaohs and pyramids!' Re-presenting the othered lives with young people through an international studies program, Mimi Miyoung Lee * The methodological dilemma: creative, critical and collaborative approaches to qualitative research, Kate Cairns

* Accountability in American education as a rhetoric and a technology of governmentality, Tatiana Suspitsyna * Academic freedom, university governance and the state: the Commission of Inquiry into the Hong Kong Institute of Education, Paul Morris * Implementing a large-scale reform in secondary schools: the role of the consultant within England's Secondary National Strategy, David Hagen Cameron * The growth of international students and economic development: friends or foes?, Nick Adnett * Maggie's day: a small-scale analysis of English education policy, Pat Thomson, Christine Hall, Ken Jones * Setting responsible pathways: the politics of responsibilisation, Harry Joseph Savelsberg * Here and now: the attendance issue in Indigenous early childhood education, Anthea Taylor

* Artist as educator? Assessing the pedagogic role of folly in the early work of the Anglo-Swiss artist Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), Hester Camilla Smith * Pedagogical conferences and stillborn professionalism among nineteenth century instituteurs, 1830–1848, Nicholas Toloudis * Whoever can speak, can sing, Lynn M. Sargeant * A field of desire: visions of education in selected Australian silent films, Josephine May * “One man one job”: the marriage ban and the employment of women teachers in Irish primary schools, Jennifer Redmond; Judith Harford * Putting education in its place: mapping the observations of Danish and English architects on 1950s school design, Catherine Burke

* Cleaning the slate? School choice and educational outcomes in Spain, Cecilia Albert, Carlos García-Serrano * Policy internationalization, national variety and governance: global models and network power in higher education states, Roger King * Internationalising the content of higher education: the need for a curriculum perspective, Lennart Svensson, Monne Wihlborg * A comparative study of research capabilities of East Asian countries and implications for Vietnam, P. Hien * Some implications of ‘public/private’ space for professional identities in higher education, Celia Whitchurch * Academisation of nursing education in the Nordic Countries, Anne Laiho * From ‘financial considerations’ to ‘poverty’: towards a reconceptualisation of the role of finances in higher education student drop out, Mignonne Breier

Programme : Today, knowledge and intellectual capital plays a principal role in the delivery of corporate performance. This importance is reflected in the fact that companies, without the force of any regulations, start to measure their knowledge and intellectual capital, they even produce and externally publish intellectual capital statements; accounting guidelines are being developed and standards are being questioned and reviewed; and governments are beginning to measure the intellectual capital of cities, regions, and countries. Companies and investors alike are trying to measure their intellectual capital and the value of knowledge. However, it seems as if the field has reached a point of maturity where we need to address issues around taxonomies and research methodology. In a recent special issue of a leading journal in the field (Marr & Chatzkel, 2004) these issues were highlighted. The concept of knowledge or intellectual capital is often poorly defined and is addressed from multiple disciplinary perspectives which all give it slightly different meanings.

The conference committee welcomes contributions on a wide range of topics using a range of scholarly approaches including theoretical and empirical papers employing qualitative, quantitative and critical methods.Case studies and work-in-progress/posters are welcomed approaches. PhD Research, proposals for roundtable discussions, non-academic contributions and product demonstrations based on the main themes are also invited.

In addition to the main conference, submissions are welcomed to four mini tracks: Communities of practice, the role of leaders and managers in the process of creativity and innovation, chaired by Nima Fallah, University of Strasbourg, France and Risk Knowledge Management, chaired by Eduardo Rodriguez, IQAnalytics, Ottawa, Canada and UNAD Colombia and Inter-organisational learning chaired by Esra Bektas, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands and Crossing the Chasm: Moving IC into the Business Mainstream chaired by Mary Adams, Trek Consulting, Massachusetts, USA.

Organisation : European University Association (EUA)Co-organised by ENQA, ESU and EURASHE and supported by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European CommissionHosted by University Claude Bernard Lyon I, France

Programme : The fifth EQAF provides a unique platform for the higher education and QA communities to follow, shape and anticipate developments in the area. The main purpose of the event is to foster a dialogue on quality assurance that bridges national boundaries and leads to a truly European discussion on QA in higher education (notably through the Bologna process higher education reforms), and to create a common European understanding of QA through a dialogue among different stakeholder groups.

The theme of this year’s Forum is “Building Bridges: Making sense of QA in European, national and institutional contexts”.Through plenary and parallel sessions, the discussion will focus on the grass roots level of quality assurance in the context of the ongoing development of the European Higher Education Area.

Conference Objectives:

The 2010 Forum will seek to examine how quality assurance tools and processes implemented at institutional and agency level:*relate to European and national level policy discussions and decisions, and*interact with and support institutional quality assurance frameworks and quality culture.

Programme:

- Official Opening and Plenary Session I: Is there a European Dimension to QA?This session will settle the stage for the EQAF 2010 by discussing the nature of the European dimension and how it is manifested in the daily quality assurance and enhancement practices.“One fleet, many ships, same destination”, by Peter Williams, former QAA Chief Executive and former president of ENQA, United Kingdom

- Plenary Session II: Taking stock of institutional QA processes in EuropeThis session will examine institutional QA processes across Europe, and how they can be articulated with the development of a quality culture.“Mapping internal quality assurance practices in Europe: results of a survey”, by Tia Loukkola, Head of Unit, EUA

- Plenary session III: Learning outcomes – exploring the challenges to QAWhat is the link between the learning outcomes, as described and used nowadays, and quality assurance? Whereas in some countries the learning outcomes are taken as a legislative basis for shaping the higher education landscape, this session will address practical issues to be faced on the field.• “Exploring learning outcomes”, by Volker Gehmlich, Fachhochschule Osnabrück, Germany• “Student-centred learning: a student perspective”, by Robert Santa, ESU, Romania

- Plenary Session IV: External Quality Assurance: its role and impactThis session will discuss the role and impact of external quality assurance in the changing context.• “The relevance of external quality assurance: an overview”, by Agi Csonka, Danish Evaluation Institute (EVA), Denmark• “Experiences in external quality assurance exercises from various perspectives”, by Janja Komljenovic, Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Slovenia

- Plenary Session V: Closing SessionThe closing session will consist of an exchange of views on the discussions held during the previous days between the presidents of ENQA, EURASHE, EUA and ESU. The discussion will be introduced and facilitated by Bjorn Stensaker, Acting Director of NIFU-STEP and academic advisor of the Forum Steering Committee.

UNESCO report shows less than 40% of countries provide girls and boys equal access to educationTwo out of three countries in the world face gender disparities in primary and secondary education and as many as half will not achieve the goal of gender parity in education by 2015, according to a new report by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).

Published on the eve of the United Nations Millenium Summit (New York 20-22 September and 15 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women, the 2010 edition of the Global Education Digest focuses on gender and education. It reports on the progress and pitfalls in reaching the goal of eliminating gender disparities at all levels of education by 2015. “This new data tells us that we need to re-affirm our commitment to education and gender equality,” said UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova. “The advances made in improving girls’ and women’s access to education and training over the past decades risk being undermined by reductions in international aid and national investments as the world struggles to cope with inter-locking crises. Yet, we all know that compromising the education of girls and women will only lead to more vulnerability and reinforce the vicious cycle of poverty.” According to the Digest, boys and girls in only 85 countries will have equal access to primary and secondary education by 2015, if present trends continue. Seventy-two countries are not likely to reach the goal Globally, girls are more likely to never enter primary school than boys. In South and West Asia, only about 87 girls start primary school for every 100 boys, according to UIS data. The situation is not much better in sub-Saharan Africa, where about 93 girls begin their primary education for every 100 boys, according to the regional average. At the national level, the chances of starting primary school for boys are at least 10% greater than those for girls in Afghanistan, Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, the Dominican Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu and Yemen. Girls in these countries are often excluded entirely from education. UIS data reveal that households are more likely to send a boy who is past the official entry age to school than a girl. However, once girls do gain entry to school, they are more likely than boys to successfully complete primary education. In many countries, boys tend to drop out of school more than girls. Boys are also more likely to repeat primary grades in 90 out of 113 countries reporting data. In particular, repetition rates among boys in primary school are double those for girls in the British Virgin Islands, Dominica, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Latvia and Saint Kitts and Nevis. The situation is even more complex at secondary level. Boys have greater access than girls to secondary education in 38% of countries, while the opposite is true in 29% of countries. However, it should be stressed that disparities against girls in secondary education are more severe than those against boys. This is clearly seen in sub-Saharan Africa where disparities against girls have worsened, according to regional averages. For every 100 boys enrolled in secondary education, there were about 79 girls in 2008 compared to 82 girls in 1999. As is the case at the primary level, once girls gain access to secondary education, they tend to complete their studies more often than boys. This pattern is widespread among middle- and high-income countries, where young women form the majority of students in upper secondary programmes that lead to university in 50 out of 69 countries reporting data. There are nearly three female students for every two males graduating from these programmes in Austria, Iceland, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Norway, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Thailand and Tunisia. In contrast, young men form the majority of vocational students in most countries. Gender disparities are equally marked in tertiary education in all regions of the world. The only countries to achieve parity at this education level are Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Hong Kong SAR of China, Mexico, Swaziland and Switzerland. In countries, such as Ethiopia, Eritrea, Guinea and Niger – where the GDP per capita is below PPP$ 3,000 – there are fewer than 35 female tertiary students for every 100 male students. In sub-Saharan Africa, progress has been stagnating for the last decade. On the other hand, in wealthy countries, female students clearly outnumber men as tertiary students. In Iceland, there are almost twice as many women enrolled in tertiary education as men. In the United States and the Russian Federation, there are about 129 and 126 female students for every 100 male students, respectively. A similar pattern is found in Latin American countries, such as Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. There are some notable exceptions to this pattern. In particular, men continue to outnumber women in tertiary education in Cyprus, Japan, Macao (China), the Republic of Korea and Turkey. Despite the improved access to tertiary education globally, women face considerable barriers as they move up the education ladder to research careers and in the labour market. At the Bachelor’s degree level, most countries reporting data have achieved gender parity in terms of graduates. Women are more likely to pursue the next level of education, accounting for 56% of graduates with Master’s degrees. However, men surpass women in virtually all countries at the highest levels of education, accounting for 56% of all Ph.D. graduates and 71% of researchers.

Access to culture goes beyond accessing cultural products, attending spaces and receiving information, it is also about an experience of personal development and enjoyment. Apart from classic channels and institutions, youth culture channels are dynamic and often informal, and many times do not enjoy official recognition. The study on youth access to culture in Europe illustrates that the ways young people access culture as users or creators, or simply participants of a cultural experience, are various and sometimes experimental.

Following an open invitation to tender, the European Commission selected the Interarts Foundation to carry out this study.

It aimed to answer the following questions:

* What are the areas where actions aimed at fostering access of young people to culture can and have been taken?

* What are the relevant practices carried out by national authorities and other actors (NGOs, local communities, associations) in different Member States?

* What are the main obstacles that hinder young people’s access to and participation in culture?

The study uses concrete examples and practices from different sectors and parts of Europe, such as financial incentives to cultural consumption, projects using new technologies or projects engaging young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in culture.

The study illustrates inter alia the need for building bridges between school, family, youth workers and community, as well as the administrations in charge of youth, culture, education, family and social affairs and other involved actors. To that aim, it suggests strategies to be developed at all levels of governance.

No Time to Waste : Policy Recommendations for Increasing College Completion

ATLANTA – States need to place a major focus on increasing the numbers of students who complete college degrees and career certificates — toward the goal of having 60 percent of working-age adults earning some type of high-quality credential by the year 2025, a major new report and set of recommendations from the Southern Regional Education Board urge.

No Time to Waste: Policy Recommendations for Improving College Completion, challenges states to become national leaders in increasing college completion.

"Reaching this goal will require a sea change in state policy and in how higher education operates, starting now," SREB President Dave Spence said. "Nothing less than economic and social progress in our region and across the nation is at stake."

The report includes 10 major policy recommendations for states to pursue — including setting specific and ambitious goals for raising the numbers of each degree type and graduation rates at each institution, system and statewide; better measures of progress to show education attainment levels and how various groups of students are faring, including transfer and part-time students; more attention to college costs and targeted financial aid for the neediest students; high school students’ readiness for college-level work; institutional practices that can help more students succeed; greater efficiency in institutions’ and systems’ operations; clearing an efficient path to degrees for students; bringing many more adults back to college who did not finish degrees and certificates, and more.

SREB states have between 26 percent and 44 percent of adults ages 25 to 64 with a two- or four-year college degree. Data are incomplete on the percentage of adults who hold career/technical certificates, which is one of many issues states need to address.

"We have no choice but to raise the education levels of the population substantially in the next 15 years if we want to remain economically competitive and continue to make social progress in our region," Spence said.

Many state and national leaders with varying views on higher education policy issues served on an SREB advisory panel that contributed to the report.

"Growing consensus is emerging in higher education and among governors, legislators and other leaders on the need to increase college completion in our nation — and in many respects, the actions that need to be taken," Spence said. "This report reflects that growing consensus."

The report cites Georgetown University researcher Anthony Carnevale’s estimate that states will need to increase the number of college degrees and certificates awarded each year by 3 percent to 6 percent annually to meet work-force demands.

Moving forward, SREB plans to work directly with governors, state legislative leaders, state higher education chiefs and many other leaders to help them make state policy changes that will help states continue to expand college access, serve students better and graduate more of them in reasonable amounts of time.

For more information or to speak with SREB officials about the report and to connect with leaders from your state who advised SREB on the report, contact SREB Communications.

The Southern Regional Education Board, or SREB, based in Atlanta, was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. More information is available online at www.sreb.org.

Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining top third graduates to a career in teaching

Improving teacher effectiveness to lift student achievement has become a major theme in U.S. education. Most efforts focus on improving the effectiveness of teachers already in the classroom or on retaining the best performers and dismissing the least effective. Attracting more young people with stronger academic backgrounds to teaching has received comparatively little attention.

McKinsey’s experience with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests that this is an important gap in the U.S. debate. In a new report, “Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching ,” we review the experiences of the top-performing systems in the world—Singapore, Finland, and South Korea. These countries recruit, develop, and retain the leading academic talent as one of their central education strategies, and they have achieved extraordinary results. In the United States, by contrast, only 23 percent of new teachers come from the top third, and just 14 percent in high poverty schools, where the difficulty of attracting and retaining talented teachers is particularly acute. The report asks what it would take to emulate nations that pursue this strategy if the United States decided it was worthwhile.

The report also includes new market research with nearly 1,500 current top-third students and teachers. It offers the first quantitative research-based answer to the question of how the U.S. could substantially increase the portion of new teachers each year who are higher caliber graduates, and how this could be done in a cost-effective way.

# Six Ages towards a Learning Region — A Retrospective, NORMAN LONGWORTH and MICHAEL OSBORNE# The Learning Region between Pedagogy and Economy, ROBERTA PIAZZA# Sustainable Development of the Learning City, PALMIRA JUCEVICIENE# Learning Regions in Germany, JUTTA THINESSE-DEMEL# The Accelerating Roles of Higher Education in Regions through the European Lifelong Learning Initiative, BALÁZS NÉMETH# The Role of Universities in the ‘Cultural Health’ of their Regions: universities' and regions' understandings of cultural engagement, LESLEY DOYLE# A Web of Learning Opportunities, BRITT ANDERSEN, GUNNAR REE and INGUNN SANDAKER# Status and Developments of eLearning in the EU10 Member States: the cases of Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia, KIRSTI ALA-MUTKA, PÁL GÁSPÁR, GÁBOR KISMIHÓK, MARGIT SUURNA and VASJA VEHOVAR# Quality and Quality Assurance in Vocational Education and Training in the Mediterranean Countries: lessons from the European approach, JEAN-RAYMOND MASSON, MOUNIR BAATI and ERWIN SEYFRIED

Do Too Many Rights Make a Wrong? A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of a Sample of Malaysian and Singapore Private Higher Education Providers in Transnational Quality Assurance Fion Choon Boey Lim Pages 211 – 222